6  After Vista scored three major victories in recent weeks in its ongoing battle against graffiti, there was no celebration.

Instead, the city’s two-man graffiti-removal crew was out at 6:30 a.m., scouring the streets, armed with cans of paint and high-powered pressure washers, looking for more tagging to document and eradicate.

Deputies with the Sheriff Department’s Community Oriented Policing & Problem Solving, or COPPS, unit went back to work analyzing the information and other evidence and developing cases against high-profile taggers.

Such is the daily battle against vandalism in Vista, one of the North County’s most graffiti-pocked communities.

It’s a fight that made headlines in recent weeks when deputies announced the arrest of two men and a boy who they said were some of the city’s most prolific taggers, responsible for nearly 250 instances of vandalism and more than $100,000 in damage citywide.

Deputies on March 23 arrested Alfonso Castro Jr., 19, at his family’s home in Vista. He is accused of leaving his tag throughout the city, including on street signs, utility boxes and poles, and on concrete and wooden walls. Deputies estimated the damage at $35,000, and Castro faces 80 felony vandalism counts.

Castro pleaded guilty to 77 misdemeanor counts and admitted to $34,000 of the damage Wednesday. He was sentenced to 45 days in jail.

On March 15, deputies arrested an Oceanside boy on suspicion of 71 counts of felony vandalism in Vista that caused an estimated $30,840 in damage. On March 8, Oscar Fernandez, 26, was arrested on 88 counts of felony vandalism that caused an estimated $38,000 in damage.

Deputies had been investigating the first of the three vandalism cases since November 2009, around the time the city started using its high-tech graffiti tracking and documentation system.

“It is a constant battle, but I think we are letting the community know that we are there for them,” said Deputy Paul Milchalke, who is spearheading the graffiti investigations. “We’re letting them know that this isn’t an issue that we are brushing under the rug, we are taking it seriously.”

The battle typically begins in the early morning. Vista’s maintenance crew hits the streets to remove graffiti from sidewalks, walls and buildings across the city, which they have either seen or have been reported on the city’s graffiti hotline. The crews photograph the tag with a camera equipped with a global positioning system.

Then, they either paint over the graffiti or use a high-powered pressure washer to blast the paint off the surface.

“We try to use the washers whenever we can,” said Rudy Luna, the city’s public works supervisor. In the backdrop, Tom Dubose and Johnny Medina aimed the long nozzles of the washers at graffiti on the ground near Taylor Street and

Goodwin Drive. “The water just blows it away.”

Crews can hit as many as 50 locations in a day, ranging from tiny stickers to paintings that can be as large as building walls.

At day’s end, around 4 p.m., the crews return to the maintenance yard on Taylor Street. They upload the day’s information in the city’s Graffiti Tracker, a computer database that documents the location, size and moniker used. It also shares the information with other jurisdictions that have access to the system.

COPPS deputies access the information from the tracker system, which they use to identify patterns of certain monikers. They do not deal with gang graffiti, only tagging done by tagging crews or graffiti artists, Milchalke said.

Deputies will often visit schools and talk to their staff to see if any students have been implicated in any on-campus graffiti incidents. Also, they will check with patrol deputies to see if any recent arrestees had items linking them to potential vandalism.

While taggers face jail time, most of them will be placed on probation and receive hefty fines. Vista, since it started using the Graffiti Tracker system, has recouped more than $140,000 from vandals. In the case of juvenile taggers, parents are responsible for paying.

Both deputies and city workers said they were pleased with the arrests and hope they serve as deterrents for others. Realistically, they said, most won’t get the message.

“It’s not just new guys. Taggers often change their name or move to another area and do graffiti under a different moniker,” Milchalke said. “That’s why we can’t really let up. We have to be constantly on guard.”